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<DIV>About translating phrases like "the more the merrier":</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I would have offered the same suggestion as Edmund made. However, there
definitely seem to be other reasonable possibilities:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary tells us that use of "the" as an
adverb, or rather as two adverbs, in phrases like "the more the merrier" goes
back to Old English. In this context "the" is not, of course, the article; it is
a relic of the instrumental case of "that", which was "thy/thon". Hence, in my
specimen phrase the sense would have been</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> by that [much] more, by that merrier.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>More logically perhaps, the sentence ought to be</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> *why more the merrier,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>the Old English instrumental case of "hwat" being "hwy/hwon". However, I
have no reason to think it was ever expressed in that way.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following quote from AD 897:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Thaet her thy mara wisdom on londe waere, thy we ma getheoda
cuthon<BR> = that here would be the greater wisdom in the land, the more of
languages we knew (?)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The OED also seems to imply that two distinct words, thy and the, had
fallen together in Old English.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We could also consider cases from Icelandic.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I recall encountering, though I do not remember whether in the old or the
modern language, a phrase like</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"...er thvi betri sem meiri er..." i.e. [something] is the better as
greater is [something else]</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Here the second word in the Icelandic is the dative case of "that", but
looks as if it corresponds to Anglo-Saxon "thy/thon". In any case, the dative in
Icelandic often seems to be used as an instrumental.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Cleasby and Vigfusson's Dictionary of Old Icelandic does not seem to
mention any construction like the one I mentioned, but does indicate another
similar possibility, using "thess", the genitive case of "that", instead of the
dative. It likens this to the German "desto". Here are two examples they give,
with my uncertain translations:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>heldur var hon thess at litilatari<BR>rather was she the humbler (?)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>thess meirr er hinn drekkr, thess meirr thyrstir hann<BR>the more that the
other (man) drinks, the more he thirsts (?)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Possibly these observations will give further ideas for inventing a Gothic
construction.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 22/10/2013 16:18:48 GMT Daylight Time,
edmundfairfax@yahoo.ca writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid;"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;" color="#000000" size="2" face="Arial"><BR><BR><!-- |**|end egp html banner|**| -->
<P>I have looked through my materials, in vain. If you are unable to find an
example in the Gothic corpus, you may wish to follow the construction in Old
English, as it is far more likely to be closer to Gothic than Modern
English:</P>
<P><BR></P>
<P style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;FONT-STYLE: normal;FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;COLOR: rgb(0,0,0);FONT-SIZE: 13px;">Swa
he bith ieldra, swa he faegerra bith (Bede, eighth century)</P>
<P style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;FONT-STYLE: normal;FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;COLOR: rgb(0,0,0);FONT-SIZE: 13px;">'The
older it is, the more beautiful it is'</P>
<P style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;FONT-STYLE: normal;FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;COLOR: rgb(0,0,0);FONT-SIZE: 13px;">(lit.
'as it is older, so it is fairer')</P>
<P style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;FONT-STYLE: normal;FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;COLOR: rgb(0,0,0);FONT-SIZE: 13px;"><BR>/
p>
<P style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;FONT-STYLE: normal;FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;COLOR: rgb(0,0,0);FONT-SIZE: 14px;">Yours
truly,</P>
<P style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;FONT-STYLE: normal;FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;COLOR: rgb(0,0,0);FONT-SIZE: 14px;"><BR></P>
<P style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent;FONT-STYLE: normal;FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;COLOR: rgb(0,0,0);FONT-SIZE: 15px;">Edmund</P>
<DIV class="ygroups-quoted"><BR><BR>---In gothic-l@yahoogroups.com,
<anheropl0x@...> wrote:<BR><BR>
<DIV id="ygrps-yiv-1053602388">So for a challenge I decided to translate the St.
Crispin's day speech (please refrain from telling me how fey it is to do so)
and I'm quite pleased with what I have so far. But I ask you, the line "The
fewer men, the greater the share of glory" is slightly troubling. I can not
shake the feeling that Gothic has a peculiar way of saying "the X, the Y" like
this. I also am unsure how to render "fewer". Any insight would be much
appreciated!</DIV></DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: white;" width="1"></DIV></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></p>
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